Word: saws
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...years later, a lama in the National Assembly received a vision of a house with blue tiles, twisted drainpipes, and a spotted dog. Immediately, thousands of lamas went into prolonged meditation to seek further direction. Soon after, the same lama saw several symbols identifying the region of Tibet where the house was to be found. Guided by this vision and disguised as merchants, a search party of monks traveled 1000 miles northeast to Amdo, where they were led to a house matching the one seen in the vision...
Edison also saw inventions in a social and commercial context. He drew up lists of inventions that the world needed, or at least would buy, and set out to produce them. In the case of electric light, gas was already lighting homes, and electric arc lights were illuminating streets and stores-though much too brilliantly, and expensively, for general use. The need, Edison saw, was for some other form of electric illumination that would provide a steadier and, above all, cheaper glow than...
...that, Edison's partisans say, made his superior. For example, Swan's carbon rod was fairly thick, Edison's filament was thin. But a crucial difference was that Swan stopped with inventing the bulb, while Edison took what would now be called a "systems approach"; he saw that the bulb had to be only one of a whole series of inventions. To make it in the first place, he and his assistants had to produce a more complete vacuum than had ever been known before. Then they had to devise a power-distribution system for lighting...
What drove him to invent? The desire to make money and win personal glory, of course. But even Edison saw that was not enough. One of his less noted sayings pointed the way not only for inventors but for all those who work with their brains. He plastered his labs with a quotation from Sir Joshua Reynolds: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking," to which Edison added one of his own: "The man who doesn't make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses...
...meeting with his long-lost father, the plot of one of the best MTM shows, was based on Brooks' meeting with his own dad, whom he also had not seen in years. Told that he was in a hospital in New Jersey, Brooks walked in and saw a man so old and decrepit that he was stunned. "I said, 'Daddy!'-and it wasn't him." His real daddy was in the next room, looking fit and youthful...